Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
So, in the end, even with a hella rocky start, it was a fun Saturday with my man.
22
ALL IN
Diana
Hugger stopped us the minute we stepped inside Annie’s house the next morning.
I knew why.
There was a vague smell of burnt food.
However vague it was, you couldn’t miss it.
This meant, when we made our way into Annie’s house, Hugger was chuckling, and I was pleased as punch because he was doing it.
Regardless of the smell, when we hit the dining room, the table was covered with food, and none of it looked burnt.
After a brief search, we found Annie out by the pool.
She was talking to someone, so we stood just a bit away, waiting for the moment to greet her.
We were doing this even though the person with her glanced at us five times, all of them smiling, and he did it to try to get Annie to cotton on she had new guests.
And we continued to stand there until she finally turned to us (on the dude’s glance number six), she blinked and said, “Oh, you’re here.”
“Yeah, we are,” I replied, and offered her the bottle of Veuve we bought her.
She took it, gazing down at it distractedly like she’d never seen a bottle of Champagne before.
“How lovely,” she mumbled.
“Thanks for asking us for brunch,” I said.
She nodded and turned to Hugger, looking him up and down.
“You clean up nice,” she remarked.
He was back in his caramel button down.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“I prefer the T-shirts,” Annie said.
Hugger’s lips twitched. “Right.”
“They have more personality,” she explained (and I agreed, though he looked fab in his button down).
“Right,” Hugger repeated.
“And there’s great art put on T-shirts,” she went on. “Album and rock art are forms of that medium that are often overlooked. Annie Leibowitz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol have all done cover art for rock albums. But Storm Thorgerson and Audrey Powell of Hipgnosis were pioneers of album art and created iconic images that are even better known than Warhol’s Campbell Soup pieces.”
“Can’t argue with you on that,” Hugger said. “Dark Side of the Moon. Zepplin’s Houses of the Holy. 10cc’s Look Hear? The Wings’ Band on the Run.”
I stared at my man, because I was impressed.
Annie was too. “You know your album art.”
“Yup.”
“Can I talk to you a moment?” she asked.
Although her gaze was aimed at Hugger, as was her conversation (so why she was asking was a mystery, since she was already talking to him), and considering she shouldn’t have anything to talk to Hugger about, except album art, I queried, “Me?”
“No, your young man.” She tucked her arm in his. “Come along.”
And off they went, leaving me behind, with them rounding her pool to the other side while I watched.
I continued to watch as, surprisingly, Annie did most of the talking.
Hugger, unsurprisingly, said nothing. He just listened while looking serious.
In the end, he nodded. Annie tucked her arm in his again and returned him to me.
“You can have him back now,” she declared.
Then she wandered off, seeming to have forgotten she was carrying a bottle of Champagne.
I looked up at Hugger. “What was that about?”
“She told me she has clients who have ‘connections.’ She then said if I hurt you, she’ll call on them to show me the error of my ways so I’ll wish I didn’t.”
This stunned me.
“What on earth?” I whispered, my gaze drifting to Annie.
“It was hilarious as fuck,” Hugger said, and I turned my attention to him. “And kinda cute. Though, I didn’t let on it was either.”
Annie had…
Wow.
When it hit me what just happened, I latched onto his arm, leaned all my weight into him and said, “I think she likes me. She really, really likes me.”
He smiled down at me. “Yeah, babe, she really likes you.”
Although I kinda knew that.
Still.
It felt great.
“I didn’t know any of our clients had ‘connections,’” I remarked.
“They probably don’t. She just made that shit up so I’d do you right, and she knows a little chick who always wears black with her hair rolled at her forehead like she’s Betty Grable is not gonna have me quaking in my boots when she lays a threat on me.”
“Gotta admit, Annie is the least threatening woman I know, outside my gram.”
“Your gram still laid your mom out yesterday,” he reminded me. Then he advised, “Never underestimate a woman. Most of them might not have the brute strength of men, but they find a way to get the job done. Like just now.”
I adored that he knew that.
So I shot him a beaming smile.
Hugger bent his head and kissed it off my face.
“You have enough room after our donuts to get some food?” I asked after he pulled away.
“Sure,” he replied.
We went into Annie’s house, which was located in Arcadia Lite and was decorated in All Annie (that being monochromatic in blacks, grays and whites, the perfect foil to showcase her Jeff Koons magenta balloon swan and her Ashley Longshore pop art portrait of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman that included the words Roll the Credits).